Il Risorgimento dei Romani. Fotografie dal 1848 al 1870

The Risorgimento, and in particular the years between the Roman Republic of 1849 and the breach of Porta Pia in 1870, coincided with the full emergence of the new photographic technique that, particularly in Rome, had a significant development especially in panorama and monument shots.
The photography of the period, which was not so technically advanced to shoot war scenes, aimed to reconstruct, with pictures taken retrospectively, the big events like the strenuous defence of the Roman Republic on the Janiculum Hill, the battle of Mentana or the breach of Porta Pia.
Besides the documentation of military operations, the exhibition presents images of the landmarks of the city and of the temporal power of the Pope (The Capitol; Castel Sant'Angelo, converted into a French fortress; Palazzo Farnese, exile headquarters of the Bourbons of Naples; the inauguration of the bridge iron of the Florentines; the train journey of Pius IX), capturing the particular atmosphere of the time, the events preceding the birth of the Italian kingdom and the limbo years between 1860 and September 20, 1870.
Many of these images, although subject to the strict papal censorship, show involvement in a liberal sense, configuring the new photographic technique as an artistic manifestation of civil and bourgeois commitment. This is even more evident in the art of portraiture where the politicians involved in uprisings are put side by side to the common people living in Rome at that time and the artists who shared with the first Roman photographers experiences and lifestyle.
Not all the photography of the time is of patriotic inspiration, as the heads of the Papal States well understood the importance of propaganda and popularization of the new art and they used it to spread faces and events (portraits of Pius IX and his court, military exercises of the Papal troops at Anzio and Rocca di Papa...).
On display are about a hundred works, mostly original photographs dating from 1849 to 1870, including old salted papers and medium and large albumen prints, as well as small stereoscopic views and portraits using the then very popular carte-de-visite format. Most of the photographs come from the collections of the Museum of Rome-Municipal Photographic Archive, supplemented by loans from the Napoleonic Museum and photographic reproductions from the Biblioteca Caetani of Modern and Contemporary History.